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Time Mesurement of Bobsleigh and Luge

©1993 NAOC TM NAOC 7-056

What are Bobsleigh and Luge?


“F1 race on the ice” is another name of bobsleigh in which the maximum speed reaches 140 km/h. On the artificial ice course of 1200 meters long, the iron sleigh with a handle and a brake slides down and competes the time.
There are the two seater sleigh and the four seater sleigh. Each team tries 4 times during two days and the time sum of the four trials decide the winner and the position. The heavier sleigh has the greater accerelation and advantage to the lighter one. So the total weight including the sleigh is limited to 390 kilograms for the two seater and 630 kilograms for the four seater.



Lying back on the luge


Luge runs on the frozen ice of 800 to 1300 meters long with the athlete lying back on a wooden sleigh. Three forms of competition are a single man, a single woman, and a pair of either men, women or both.
A single competes for the time sum of four trials during the two days. A pair competition sums up the time of two trials in a day.
The sleigh weight is limited to 23kg for the single and 27kg for the pair but there is no claasification of the athlete's weight.

The start dash is an important factor to win in both bob and luge.
The other important factors are minimizing the air resistance and choosing the idealistic course in the curves.



Start-time, lap-time, and goal-time


The time in bob and luge is recorded by the electric beams set at the start and the goal. The bobsleigh measures 1/100 sec but luge counts 1/1000 sec. That 1/1000 measurement is only for luge and speed skating in winter sports.

There is a rule that the official lap time points must be set at four places in bob and three places in luge. The electric beams and the sensors at those points are automatically checked and the accurate lap time is measured by the system.



Course layout on the score board


The score board of bob and luge has a course layout map and each lap time is shown on the map together with the time difference from the best.
Thus the spectators can see how the race is going. This system can also measure the maximum speed of the sleigh and show it on the score board and send it to the data center.